Judo Diplomacy

The fact that Putin is adept at judo is well known and admired. I got a taste of this admiration a few years ago when I stopped into a Moscow photo shop across from INION to get picture for my library card. Hanging on the wall were two pictures of Putin. One looking all stately and serious; the other in full judo garb with arms steady for a throw.

Little did I know that Putin and a few of his fellow judo enthusiasts penned a manual of their best throws, tumbles, and dodges called Judo: History, Theory, Practice. That is until I happened upon Daniel Soar’s “Short Cuts” in new issue of the London Review of Books. Soar wonders whether Putin’s judo mastery influenced his recent diplomatic jousting with President Bush. The careful observer can see that it indeed does.

As Soar explains:

The excellent thing about judo – in theory – is that you don’t have to be stronger than your opponent to beat him. The idea is that you use the momentum of his attack to keep him moving in the same direction, and then, with a little twist, you send him flying onto the mat. The bigger they are the harder they fall. This should be useful to Putin, since Russia is so heavily outgunned and outspent by the US military machine that it can’t win the arms race the old-fashioned way. Putin provides a striking metaphor to demonstrate the judo master’s technique. He calls it ‘give way in order to conquer’. Imagine you are a locked door. Your opponent wants to break you open with his shoulder. If he is ‘big and strong enough and rams through the door (that is, you) from a running start, he will achieve his aim’. But here’s the neat bit. If instead of ‘digging in your heels and resisting your opponent’s onslaught’, you unlock it at the last minute, then, ‘not meeting any resistance and unable to stop, your opponent bursts through the wide-open door, losing balance and falling.’ If you’re even more cunning, you can stop being a door and stick out a leg, causing him to trip as he sails through. ‘Minimum effort, maximum effect’, as Russia’s effortlessly effective president says.

The evident ingenuity of this technique made me wonder why Putin didn’t deploy it in the run-up to the G8 dojo. It was puzzling. On his way to Germany, Bush went on the offensive. He visited Poland and the Czech Republic to publicise his plan to install ‘exoatmospheric kill vehicles’ – little missiles designed to hit bigger missiles – on sites close to the Russian border. Putin’s counter-attack was very bold. He said that if America was going to play silly buggers with its Raytheon EKVs, then he would point his biggest ICBMs at Western European cities. ‘A new Cold War!’ the papers screamed. The leaders of the free world were righteously outraged, whereas Putin had merely closed the door. Any moment now he would flip the latch and stick out a leg.

But the analogy was troubling. When would the door open, and where was his leg? At first I wondered whether Putin was readying himself for the long game, hunkering down, raising the stakes to force the US to spend more and more money on more and more weapons until it bankrupted itself and went pop. Except, of course, that this would be playing into Bush’s hands, since American military spending is what the US economy depends on. The need for more weaponry would mean an even mightier America. So Putin wasn’t so clever after all: he’d forgotten all his old teaching and had taken up gunslinging in a fight he could only lose. Or so I thought.

On 7 June the full genius of Putin’s strategy was revealed. Earlier, Bush had said: ‘Vladimir – I call him Vladimir – you should not fear the missile defence system . . . Why don’t you co-operate with us on the missile defence?’ Ingeniously, Putin now called his bluff, and unbolted the new Iron Curtain. He quietly suggested that the US base its missile interception system on a Russian military installation in Azerbaijan, an unanswerable solution if – as the Americans claim – the EKVs really are intended to counter an Iranian nuclear threat. Bush’s people, wrong-footed, could only say that his proposal was ‘interesting’ and that the presidents would discuss it further in Kennebunkport, Maine at the beginning of July. But this is likely to be the end of the missile defence plan for Poland and the Czech Republic. Ippon!

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Until recently, Sochi was mostly viewed in the context of Russia’s anti-homosexuality laws. No more. Stories of corruption and rights abuses in the preparation of the Olympics are all the rage. Joshua Yaffa’s recent article in Business Week is a must read on the subject. The BBC has also produced an hour long audio documentary, the “Putin Project,” surveying corruption, housing demolition, labor abuses and international affairs in the context of Sochi. There are numerous of other treatments pushing the subject to saturation. Given the coverage, it’s a legitimate question whether another expose on Sochi is necessary. Enter Putin’s Games, an hour long documentary directed by Aleksandr Gentelev and produced by Simone Baumann. It’s a comprehensive film that covers similar ground as Yaffa and the BBC. Its value is less in the information and more in giving a visual sense of the monstrosity of Sochi and its various heroes and villains. What’s more, the film has gotten some extra unsolicited exposure. Baumann was approached three times and offered 600,000 euros to can the film.

Why is this film so dangerous? It’s hard to say. In many ways it’s a standard expose of corruption in Russia. But then again, it’s about Sochi, Putin’s personal megaproject. Putin’s Games makes this personal touch clear by treating Russia’s Olympic bid as the president’s personal mission. Apparently, however, the idea didn’t originate with him. Having the Olympics in Sochi was first floated by former ski champion and Russian Olympic Committee chief Leonid Tyagachev while he and Putin were skiing at Krasnaya Polyana.

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Two references to Russia being the next Nazi Germany in two days. The one from the left came yesterday. Fortunately, Daniel Silva is no intellectual heavy hitter and his Russia paranoia is likely to quietly dissipate into the ether.

Today’s however comes from someone who carries a big intellectual bat. Namely, the ever loving Richard Pipes. Pipes needs no introduction. His Russophobia is well documented in print and Cold Warrior service. Always willing to challenge evil everywhere, Pipes has joined the Russia as Fascist bandwagon. Need proof? Just look at his letter to the Financial Times where he compares Russia’s behavior toward Georgia as akin to “Germany’s aggression against Czechoslovakia.” Here is the letter in full:

Sir, Peter J. Rooney (Letters, July 17) urges us to abandon the “insignificant statelet” of “tiny Georgia” to Russian aggression because its defence may lead to a military confrontation with Russia. This advice reminds me of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s willingness in the autumn of 1938 to sacrifice “tiny” Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany because it was a “quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing”.

As it soon turned out, Germany’s aggression against Czechoslovakia was a prelude to her invasion of Poland, which unleashed the second world war. Aggressive large powers tend to begin their expansion with “insignificant statelets” in order to test the world’s reaction before going after bigger fish. I think Russia’s behaviour toward Georgia fits this pattern. It should not be ignored.

Richard Pipes,
Cambridge, MA 02138, US

Fascism is just the gift that keeps on giving. It’s no surprise Pipes the Elder has joined the “Fascism Beware!” choir considering that his son, Daniel, is one the “intellectual” architects of “islamo-fascism” (following Lefty gone Righty Christopher Hitchens, who coined the term).

Is your washroom breeding Fascists, Messrs Pipes?

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My latest contribution to Pajamas Media “Why Putvedev?” is up. There isn’t much new in it for frequent readers of this blog. Hopefully, it will give a wider audience a different opinion about the Russian Presidential Elections. Also I highly recommend Andrew Wilson’s analysis, “Russia’s Post-election Balance” on Open Democracy. It seems that we share some similar opinions.